water and time
by firegirl56
Summary: He was nothing but time and water: lost hours staring at a violin or a scarf or a skull; the slow cascade of watery feeling dripping its way out of his heart, making a noise like a raindrop on the sink every time he took a step. Water and time.


**This is evidence I should not try to write poetically at 3am. x.x**

**I apologize to any train-wrecks of metaphors here. My writing style has been shifting a lot recently toward more poetry-esque stuff, even though I'm not too good at it. Occasionally I'll write something that I really like. This is one of those things, though to be honest, I'm torn between "This is the greatest thing I've ever written!" and "This is absolute shit." You know how it is. Anyways, enjoy.**

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

There was a rhythm in John's empty life now. A slow, monotonous, steady rhythm. The faucet's dripping that he couldn't be bothered to fix. The slow ticking of the clock in his bedroom, molasses sliding against his skin. Time was too slow.

He was nothing but time and water: lost hours staring at a violin or a scarf or a skull; the slow cascade of watery emotion dripping its way out of his heart, making a noise like a raindrop on the sink every time he took a step.

Water and time.

Drip.

Gone was the fire of the detective, the racing steam engine mind, the nicotine smoke that hung around the tall man in a haze of darkness calling to mind images of a Sherlock screaming in midnight suffocations, crying out with relief as cocaine raced through his veins, burning his mind, slowing the red hot pistons pumping ideas through his brain to a warm radiator.

Sherlock was fire; John was water. And time.

Time that moved so slowly without that Fire on his skin, turning his Water to steam that hissed when they brushed against each other in a chase.

The Fire was now a pile of sodden ashes, drowned in blood, and Water could do nothing to bring it back. Time did not know it could.

When Fire leapt back from the ashes like a newborn phoenix, Water vaporized completely, and Time that had once scraped against scarred skin came to a screeching halt.

/

John's eyes were wide open, drinking in his best friend as if the lean frame was water in the center of a desert. Fists clenched and unclenched; tongue could not form words, though many tried their weight between his teeth.

Eyes of ice bore into eyes of coffee, and John felt himself shot again. And again and again. Over and over until the end of time, which had frozen under Sherlock's gaze. But these bullets were not in his shoulder. They buried themselves deep in John's chest and pained in time with each heartbeat.

In time, he learned the bullets were the pieces of his heart.

Words were too special to pass through the air between their faces, the air of 221B, air that had not held Sherlock's scent in an unspeakable eternity for both men. The words they needed could not be defiled by the air that needed, that _belonged_, to two and had only had one.

So John crushed a tidal wave of words through his lips against the roaring forest fire of unsaid things that quivered in Sherlock's cupid's bow.

It was a natural disaster as never seen before: fire and water not fighting but merging into a hissing steam that rushed between teeth and into lips through breathy kisses, short blasts of a steam train's whistle shrilly declaring _"back you're alive oh Sherlock"_ and _"yes I'm so sorry John"_.

Then tears like rainwater spilled across John's cheeks: not the silent kind that belonged to an empty flat and a dusty violin; they were the streaming deluge of a thunderstorm that thrived in madness and brightness and _life_.

John's fingers curled into the dark curly hair of his best friend, and Sherlock's unbuttoned the doctor's shirt through the breathless whispers of crashing mouths: "you're real" from John and "you're mine" from Sherlock.

The time for sacred whispers was over, and Sherlock's shaking fingers skimmed the bare chest of his best friend, the one who had waited for him to return, the one who had believed in a roaring fire. John moaned as mad desire and suppressed emotion coursed through him in an uncontrollable current, sending shivers down his spine. Sherlock locked their lips together, replacing the whispery kisses with one more solid. John wept into the detective's face, spreading water like only water could. He tasted like salt under the taller man's tongue.

The heat of Sherlock's body burned so hot and bright that his icy eyes melted, dripping rain down his cheeks to match John's.

John's rainstorm had finally run out of precipitation. He was empty of tears, leaving only a burning passion as he tore at the buttons of his best friend's shirt.

/

And so the fire turned to water and the water turned to fire as they stumbled through the welcoming darkness to cotton sheets and skin.


End file.
